Lighting was even more glaring. Shadows were everywhere. When actors crossed down stage of each other the one behind was covered with shadows. Too often the side of stage that no one stood was lit and the other side of the stage where actors were had no light. For to much of the time there was no front lighting on the actors. It was a strain to see their faces – and after awhile it really wasn’t worth the trouble.

Mics on stage and in the house kept going into feedback as they were exploring? the use of the reverb to give some moments a spookier feel. Why couldn’t they have done this without an audience in the room.

The other big first that I experienced was that Blair Brown in the middle of an emotional moment shouted out, “LINE”. I was stunned. Was this a play going in an exciting new direction or was this really the sign of an unprepared production. I soon realized it was the latter. In the second half of this intermidly long production lines were being dropped and paraphrased everywhere. Eventually even Edie Faldo had to call for her lines.

In my favorite blunder, the dialogue on stage had come to an unplanned halt. To solve this gap, one character went all the way across the stage to get a vacuum cleaner out of the closet and return to clean up the non-existent mess created by dropping a pot of fake flowers. There was clearly nothing to vacuum – but vacuum away she did as the other two looked at each other eager to see where the play was going to go now..

And the script of three women acting out the life of a single woman’s experience through both her daughter and mothers eyes was such a sleeper. Nothing much happened on stage – no conflict, no big conflict, no development. Lots and lots of talking was all we were going to get tonight – some of it actually scripted.